Donors living abroad gave big to super PAC supporting Bush

At $102.5 million, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s (R) super PAC, Right to Rise USA, has raised enough cash to turn many other 2016 presidential candidates green with envy.

In fact, even the amount the group has brought in just from donors with offshore addresses — $757,137 — might draw groans from some of his rivals.

The most generous donors who sent in their gifts from abroad included Gary Rieschel, now a Shanghai resident and founding managing partner of Qiming Venture Partners, which focuses on “early stage investments in China”; he gave $100,000 to Right to Rise USA. Matching Rieschel’s contribution was Hong Kong development mogul Ronnie Chan, chairman of the Hang Lung Group and Hang Lung Properties Limited. Chan and his wife Barbara each donated $2,700 to Bush’s campaign as well. Previously, Chan was a director and audit committee member of the now-defunct energy company Enron during the time it was engaged in a major accounting scandal.

Another set of donations from Hong Kong, however — which adds up to just under half-a-million dollars — is more mysterious. In May 2015, Chen Shu Te, who describes himself as “retired,” made threeseparate donations of $150,000 and over — totaling $499,137 — to Right to Rise USA. OpenSecrets Blog hasn’t been able to link him to any entity.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules prohibit “foreign nationals” (which doesn’t include green card holders) from “contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly.” The FEC also states any “federal political committee” aware of such contributions must either refund them or deposit them and “take steps to determine its legality” — all within 10 days of the “treasurer’s receipt.” A refund must be issued if the committee cannot confirm “within 30 days of the treasurer’s receipt” that the donation was legal.

When contacted by the OpenSecrets Blog about about whether Chen Shu Te’s contributions have been vetted, the super PAC’s communications director, Paul Lindsay, said that Right to Rise USA doesn’t “respond to questions from DC advocacy organizations.” Told that the Center for Responsive Politics is not an advocacy organization, Lindsay insisted otherwise and would not answer our query.

Other donors living abroad also gave to Right to Rise USA. There’s Jean-Dominique Virchaux, a Paris-based managing director and regional leader for France and Spain at executive search firm Korn Ferry, who gave $5,000 to Right to Rise in June. The super PAC also received that amount from C. James Schaeffer IV, a former George H.W. Bush administration official who now serves as COO of Bahamas-based Old Fort Financial; and Kirk Sweeney — the CEO of Millennium Management’s Asia branch, based in Singapore. L. Brooks Entwistle, the Singapore-based CEO of Everstone Capital, gave the super PAC double that amount at $10,000.

OpenSecrets Blog found references indicating that nearly all the Right to Rise USA donors mentioned above have been educated in the U.S. and/or previously worked in the U.S. Chen Shu Te is the only one about whom virtually no information could be located — except that someone by the same name and with a Hong Kong address made two contributions of $1,000 each, in 1990 and 1992, to the Senate campaign of Leo McCarthy, a California Democrat. No contributions since then could be located on CRP’s database.

Only one corporate donation with a foreign address came in to the super PAC: $25,000 from SRI Capital Inc, for which a Canadian address is listed on Right to Rise USA’s filing.

Donations from abroad have made their way into Democratic coffers as well, though in much smaller amounts. Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) in her 2016 bid, doesn’t list any foreign donors, but plenty have contributed to her campaign — around 14 pages worth, totaling more than $300,000. They include $2,700 (the limit for an individual donation) from the chairman of a Saudi Arabian air distribution company who filed from London (along with his wife); the CEO of a branding agency in Athens; the vice-chair of Goldman Sachs Japan; and the CEO of Deutsche Bank UK, among others.

Bush’s campaign committee took in roughly $50,000 from overseas fans in the first six months of 2015, less than a tenth of what his super PAC raised from them. No other candidate committee took in more than about $13,000 from donors not living in the U.S.

Alex Lazar is the summer 2015 reporting intern for OpenSecrets Blog. He is a graduate of George Washington University. His previous articles have been published by various news organizations including The Hill, ABCNews.com and The Huffington Post.

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